Concerns About the State of High School Soccer

[Guest]

I've been thinking a lot about high school soccer lately, and something just doesn't add up. It's like there's this weird disconnect between what soccer can be and what it becomes in high school. I've watched enough games to see a pattern - no matter who's coaching, the play always seems to devolve into this crazy physical, boot-and-run style that has almost nothing to do with actual soccer.

I was talking to my son's club coach about this the other day, and he just gets it. These high school teams take players who are actually skilled and somehow transform them into these long-ball, physical players who barely recognize the sport they used to love. He spends months after the high school season just trying to unteach all the bad habits kids pick up.

It's not like this is happening with one bad coach or in one weird school. It seems systematic. Is it the refs not calling fouls? Are coaches just defaulting to the easiest strategy? Or is it because high school teams have this mix of really skilled club players and select players for who soccer is not a priority?

What frustrates me most is thinking about my son. He's a technical player - smart, skilled on the ball. But I can already imagine his high school coach looking at his size in Feb and just seeing a way to bulldoze other players. That's not soccer. That's not what the sport should be about.

I'm genuinely curious - and maybe a little worried - about why high school soccer has become this weird, watered-down version of the game. There's got to be a way to fix this, right?

[Guest]

On the girls side I would say the refs call way more than they do in league play. Way more cards given out too. I think the issue is the mix of players skill levels, fitness levels, and the coaches skill level. Our HS coach couldn't coach his way out of a paper sack. It's the same line up the same formation all season, never makes changes to respond to what's happening on the field. We only have 4-5 premier kids on our varsity another 4-5 select kids and the rest are rec/high school soccer. It's definitely back line to front line boot ball as there's no player skilled enough to function well in the mid.

[Guest]

I've been thinking a lot about high school soccer lately, and something just doesn't add up. It's like there's this weird disconnect between what soccer can be and what it becomes in high school. I've watched enough games to see a pattern - no matter who's coaching, the play always seems to devolve into this crazy physical, boot-and-run style that has almost nothing to do with actual soccer.

I was talking to my son's club coach about this the other day, and he just gets it. These high school teams take players who are actually skilled and somehow transform them into these long-ball, physical players who barely recognize the sport they used to love. He spends months after the high school season just trying to unteach all the bad habits kids pick up.

It's not like this is happening with one bad coach or in one weird school. It seems systematic. Is it the refs not calling fouls? Are coaches just defaulting to the easiest strategy? Or is it because high school teams have this mix of really skilled club players and select players for who soccer is not a priority?

What frustrates me most is thinking about my son. He's a technical player - smart, skilled on the ball. But I can already imagine his high school coach looking at his size in Feb and just seeing a way to bulldoze other players. That's not soccer. That's not what the sport should be about.

I'm genuinely curious - and maybe a little worried - about why high school soccer has become this weird, watered-down version of the game. There's got to be a way to fix this, right?

I'm starting to have second thoughts about my son playing high school football. Our coach at Eastside actually warned us about some of the violent tackles and dirty play, and the risk of injury sounds pretty significant. I'm really not sure how I feel about it now.

[Guest]

I've been thinking a lot about high school soccer lately, and something just doesn't add up. It's like there's this weird disconnect between what soccer can be and what it becomes in high school. I've watched enough games to see a pattern - no matter who's coaching, the play always seems to devolve into this crazy physical, boot-and-run style that has almost nothing to do with actual soccer.

I was talking to my son's club coach about this the other day, and he just gets it. These high school teams take players who are actually skilled and somehow transform them into these long-ball, physical players who barely recognize the sport they used to love. He spends months after the high school season just trying to unteach all the bad habits kids pick up.

It's not like this is happening with one bad coach or in one weird school. It seems systematic. Is it the refs not calling fouls? Are coaches just defaulting to the easiest strategy? Or is it because high school teams have this mix of really skilled club players and select players for who soccer is not a priority?

What frustrates me most is thinking about my son. He's a technical player - smart, skilled on the ball. But I can already imagine his high school coach looking at his size in Feb and just seeing a way to bulldoze other players. That's not soccer. That's not what the sport should be about.

I'm genuinely curious - and maybe a little worried - about why high school soccer has become this weird, watered-down version of the game. There's got to be a way to fix this, right?

You know little about soccer and likely didnt watch copa america in the 80's or epl in the mid 90's/00's.

Soccer at its roots is a physical game. Add school pride, ego, mix of technical ability and teen testosterone and you get the modern day high school soccer game.

the beauty of high school soccer is that it has nothing to do with development, equal playing time or any of the bull**** that makes club soccer woke. 18 of your mates in a do or die dogfight. Parents cant buy their way on a team. Age doesnt matter- are you good enough to play...

yes kids get injured and its sad to see.

keep your snowflake at home.

[Guest]

You know little about soccer and likely didnt watch copa america in the 80's or epl in the mid 90's/00's.

Soccer at its roots is a physical game. Add school pride, ego, mix of technical ability and teen testosterone and you get the modern day high school soccer game.

the beauty of high school soccer is that it has nothing to do with development, equal playing time or any of the bull**** that makes club soccer woke. 18 of your mates in a do or die dogfight. Parents cant buy their way on a team. Age doesnt matter- are you good enough to play...

yes kids get injured and its sad to see.

keep your snowflake at home.

Thats a little harsh, so I will tone it down a bit.

HS Soccer isnt for everybody. Your concerns are legitimate. Maybe just have your child play futsal, ttain with other like minded individuals, or enjoy another sport.

Your pansy as5 child probably wouldnt make the team anyway, as you suggest.

A couple suggestions:
- The world doesnt revolve around your preferences.
- Stop being a helicopter parent and trying to get the world to accomodate to your child.

You aint teaching your kid the right way

[Guest]

the play always seems to devolve into this crazy physical, boot-and-run style that has almost nothing to do with actual soccer.

That's a good observation, but this is what actual soccer looks like for most non-professional players. It even looked like that for professional players a 100 years ago. Sunday leagues play very similar style, and to be able to play "actual soccer" you need to have practiced a lot, which most high school players didn't, and to be honest, shouldn't have. No one needs to spend hours daily developing their touch when they don't want to play pro. Just boot the ball, and have fun. It's still athletics and running around.

[Guest]

I've been thinking a lot about high school soccer lately, and something just doesn't add up. It's like there's this weird disconnect between what soccer can be and what it becomes in high school. I've watched enough games to see a pattern - no matter who's coaching, the play always seems to devolve into this crazy physical, boot-and-run style that has almost nothing to do with actual soccer.

I was talking to my son's club coach about this the other day, and he just gets it. These high school teams take players who are actually skilled and somehow transform them into these long-ball, physical players who barely recognize the sport they used to love. He spends months after the high school season just trying to unteach all the bad habits kids pick up.

It's not like this is happening with one bad coach or in one weird school. It seems systematic. Is it the refs not calling fouls? Are coaches just defaulting to the easiest strategy? Or is it because high school teams have this mix of really skilled club players and select players for who soccer is not a priority?

What frustrates me most is thinking about my son. He's a technical player - smart, skilled on the ball. But I can already imagine his high school coach looking at his size in Feb and just seeing a way to bulldoze other players. That's not soccer. That's not what the sport should be about.

I'm genuinely curious - and maybe a little worried - about why high school soccer has become this weird, watered-down version of the game. There's got to be a way to fix this, right?

It’s high school soccer. It’s about representing your school, playing with your school mates and with some kids you don’t normally play with or against on club ball with. Chill out Chad

[Guest]

Previous two posts are lame. Any merit your arguments (and I do think there are interesting points of discussion buried under a bushel of drivel there) are negated when you have to go ad hominem and start making things up about the original poster. The whole "I disagree with you and I will prove you are wrong by making things up about your kids and saying he or she is a terrible soccer player and you are a bad parent and you don't know anything about soccer" trope is infantile but it gets recycled so often around here. It tends to make me think that the person saying it is just a miserable sap who is projecting about his or her own disappointments. But to the the point being made here - I guess I don't really know that do I? I wonder what drives people to collect their dopamine hits that way.

It's disappointing to me that anytime a person tries to start a meaningful discussion around here there are people who immediately denigrate the topic and the person posting it. People trying to converse with a community about a topic their family is involved in doesn't mean that they are helicopter parents or narcissists - that's an invalid leap of logic to assume so. If you don't enjoy the topic, just move on. Don't be such a "snowflake" and throw a tantrum where you are so dysregulated you have to make things up to support your bitter worldview


My two cents re: the original topic - I think the issue is driven by the diverse amount of experience on high school soccer teams. A typical high school teams gets a mix including the following:

• A handful of kids who have many years experience at higher levels of soccer
• Kids who have plays rec soccer for many years or lots of non-club soccer with family and friends
• Kids who are really good athletes but lack organized soccer experience
• At some schools - a handful of Kids who aren't highly talented athletes and/or lack organized soccer experience but are exploring the sport and team experience and/or helping fill an otherwise empty role.

Schools in expensive zip codes (hello pay to play inequity issues) or ones that have high concentrations of people who immigrated from cultures that place a high value on soccer and are larger schools tend to skew towards having more of the first two bullets. The more those three variables decrease, the higher the concentration of the latter two bullet points on a team.

School soccer is fascinating to me to see how that different mixture of player types is managed. It's hard for a lot of higher level club teams to maintain a disciplined possession based style. It's spectacularly challenging to keep a school based team from going long ball only, even when the coach is pushing that. It's a reflexive tendency for most people to feel like they need to move forward if they have the ball and space. It takes a long time for players to understand they can hold the ball, they can play it backwards, they can make the defenders come to them instead of the opposite. It takes a lot of training and experience for most to overcome the intuition of always being direct in a game.

I see high level players who look to be lost out pitch at times because they are making off ball movement that would be totally appropriate on their club team but puts them totally out of sync with their school team. The best of these players learn to understand this, adjust to the different dynamic, coach and build up their team and often switch to a position that is not their preferred spot to help organize the team (like a forward playing CB or MF to "quarterback" the team (to use another sport's euphemism)).

The kids who get recruited because they are good athletes but lack soccer experience - You can see they are fast and coordinated. But you can also tell their discomfort on the ball and they often have a desire to be incredibly direct. You can also see traits from other sports being applied - basketball kids often intuitively know how where to position themselves when defending both on and off the ball and can have a good sense of off ball movement on offense. But they also go into a wide meg-able stance when defending 1:1 and lack confidence to hold the ball or execute the right pass even if they know what would be ideal. And sometimes they reflexively throw down some heinous picks that would have been fine in basketball but are card-able on the pitch. Toning down the blocking and use of arms is hard for an experienced American football player to minimize in the heat of the moment.

The nuance and skill of making a tackle the right way (even an intentional, illegal one) is an incredibly high level skill that requires an insane amount of experience for most players to execute correctly. Think of all the dynamic internal and external variables you need to process to initiate and execute a good tackle and how quickly you have to do it. It's kind of like hitting a 90+ MPH fastball - you don't really have time to consciously think about it, you just have to react in a reflexive and controlled manner that is born of innumerabaly repetitive prior experiences that honed one's nervous system to a perceptual processing and motor planning ability that would not exist otherwise (full disclosure: I can't and probably never will hit a 90 MPH fastball - but that's what I imagine is going on when I watch MLB players) But many of these players don't know what they don't know and lack the muscle memory experience and judgement to be able to execute such maneuvers in a way you are used to seeing in higher level soccer. The doesn't mean they won't try it, because most of these kids are playing their hearts out trying not to disappoint their team and coach. I am not saying they shouldn't go in for challenging tackles - they'll never develop the skill otherwise - but sometimes there is a bit more mustard on the endeavor than there needs to be.

The challenges described above just get exacerbated the further you move down the bullet point list I made up of player types. You get less experience, less skill, less athleticism but a commensurate level of passion and desire to win and a drive to try their hardest. And probably less emotional composure and regulation in the heat of the battle. Throw in some indignancy from trash talking and a perceived injustice from hard fouls committed against themselves or their team. All these ingredients conspire to make for a way more physical and, frankly, dangerous game.

To the point of the game being more physical in the past at the higher(pro and national) levels in the past. I am no expert on that but that is my impression as well. But those guys were professional level athletes. If they laid someone out or went in studs up, they were doing it intentionally the majority of the time and or were making a decision to risk causing a hard foul. To me, that is very different from the dangerous fouls I often see high school soccer that are often caused by high effort, low composure, low skill, and limited experience and knowledge.

I imagine the refs may have a tendency to swallow their whistle more because they don't want to be be blowing it every 30 seconds when they are shepherding a game full of kids with low experience and the whole thing just snowballs. That creates a league culture that becomes desensitized to more physical play. That carries over, even if it's two teams playing that are private schools and public schools in high rent districts that are stocked with players who do have plenty of experience and skill.

So there's my "Guns, Germs and Steel" level dissertation on why school soccer is more physical. Didn't set out to type that much. What do you think? Does that make sense? Am I missing key issues? Am i an alcoholic tiger mom who is trying to make up for a psychologic scar branded upon my twisted self image that resulted from being slighted by a rival 4th grader in the Clallam County Grange Association Produce Display competition in '89? I guess I can't know that answer to the latter until the truth is extolled upon my by random internet trolls who are fueled by invalid extrapolations. As for the former questions, I look forward to reading your thoughts.

[Guest]

You aint teaching your kid the right way

Spoken like an expert in lame parenting.

[Guest]

Previous two posts are lame. Any merit your arguments (and I do think there are interesting points of discussion buried under a bushel of drivel there) are negated when you have to go ad hominem and start making things up about the original poster. The whole "I disagree with you and I will prove you are wrong by making things up about your kids and saying he or she is a terrible soccer player and you are a bad parent and you don't know anything about soccer" trope is infantile but it gets recycled so often around here. It tends to make me think that the person saying it is just a miserable sap who is projecting about his or her own disappointments. But to the the point being made here - I guess I don't really know that do I? I wonder what drives people to collect their dopamine hits that way.

It's disappointing to me that anytime a person tries to start a meaningful discussion around here there are people who immediately denigrate the topic and the person posting it. People trying to converse with a community about a topic their family is involved in doesn't mean that they are helicopter parents or narcissists - that's an invalid leap of logic to assume so. If you don't enjoy the topic, just move on. Don't be such a "snowflake" and throw a tantrum where you are so dysregulated you have to make things up to support your bitter worldview


My two cents re: the original topic - I think the issue is driven by the diverse amount of experience on high school soccer teams. A typical high school teams gets a mix including the following:

• A handful of kids who have many years experience at higher levels of soccer
• Kids who have plays rec soccer for many years or lots of non-club soccer with family and friends
• Kids who are really good athletes but lack organized soccer experience
• At some schools - a handful of Kids who aren't highly talented athletes and/or lack organized soccer experience but are exploring the sport and team experience and/or helping fill an otherwise empty role.

Schools in expensive zip codes (hello pay to play inequity issues) or ones that have high concentrations of people who immigrated from cultures that place a high value on soccer and are larger schools tend to skew towards having more of the first two bullets. The more those three variables decrease, the higher the concentration of the latter two bullet points on a team.

School soccer is fascinating to me to see how that different mixture of player types is managed. It's hard for a lot of higher level club teams to maintain a disciplined possession based style. It's spectacularly challenging to keep a school based team from going long ball only, even when the coach is pushing that. It's a reflexive tendency for most people to feel like they need to move forward if they have the ball and space. It takes a long time for players to understand they can hold the ball, they can play it backwards, they can make the defenders come to them instead of the opposite. It takes a lot of training and experience for most to overcome the intuition of always being direct in a game.

I see high level players who look to be lost out pitch at times because they are making off ball movement that would be totally appropriate on their club team but puts them totally out of sync with their school team. The best of these players learn to understand this, adjust to the different dynamic, coach and build up their team and often switch to a position that is not their preferred spot to help organize the team (like a forward playing CB or MF to "quarterback" the team (to use another sport's euphemism)).

The kids who get recruited because they are good athletes but lack soccer experience - You can see they are fast and coordinated. But you can also tell their discomfort on the ball and they often have a desire to be incredibly direct. You can also see traits from other sports being applied - basketball kids often intuitively know how where to position themselves when defending both on and off the ball and can have a good sense of off ball movement on offense. But they also go into a wide meg-able stance when defending 1:1 and lack confidence to hold the ball or execute the right pass even if they know what would be ideal. And sometimes they reflexively throw down some heinous picks that would have been fine in basketball but are card-able on the pitch. Toning down the blocking and use of arms is hard for an experienced American football player to minimize in the heat of the moment.

The nuance and skill of making a tackle the right way (even an intentional, illegal one) is an incredibly high level skill that requires an insane amount of experience for most players to execute correctly. Think of all the dynamic internal and external variables you need to process to initiate and execute a good tackle and how quickly you have to do it. It's kind of like hitting a 90+ MPH fastball - you don't really have time to consciously think about it, you just have to react in a reflexive and controlled manner that is born of innumerabaly repetitive prior experiences that honed one's nervous system to a perceptual processing and motor planning ability that would not exist otherwise (full disclosure: I can't and probably never will hit a 90 MPH fastball - but that's what I imagine is going on when I watch MLB players) But many of these players don't know what they don't know and lack the muscle memory experience and judgement to be able to execute such maneuvers in a way you are used to seeing in higher level soccer. The doesn't mean they won't try it, because most of these kids are playing their hearts out trying not to disappoint their team and coach. I am not saying they shouldn't go in for challenging tackles - they'll never develop the skill otherwise - but sometimes there is a bit more mustard on the endeavor than there needs to be.

The challenges described above just get exacerbated the further you move down the bullet point list I made up of player types. You get less experience, less skill, less athleticism but a commensurate level of passion and desire to win and a drive to try their hardest. And probably less emotional composure and regulation in the heat of the battle. Throw in some indignancy from trash talking and a perceived injustice from hard fouls committed against themselves or their team. All these ingredients conspire to make for a way more physical and, frankly, dangerous game.

To the point of the game being more physical in the past at the higher(pro and national) levels in the past. I am no expert on that but that is my impression as well. But those guys were professional level athletes. If they laid someone out or went in studs up, they were doing it intentionally the majority of the time and or were making a decision to risk causing a hard foul. To me, that is very different from the dangerous fouls I often see high school soccer that are often caused by high effort, low composure, low skill, and limited experience and knowledge.

I imagine the refs may have a tendency to swallow their whistle more because they don't want to be be blowing it every 30 seconds when they are shepherding a game full of kids with low experience and the whole thing just snowballs. That creates a league culture that becomes desensitized to more physical play. That carries over, even if it's two teams playing that are private schools and public schools in high rent districts that are stocked with players who do have plenty of experience and skill.

So there's my "Guns, Germs and Steel" level dissertation on why school soccer is more physical. Didn't set out to type that much. What do you think? Does that make sense? Am I missing key issues? Am i an alcoholic tiger mom who is trying to make up for a psychologic scar branded upon my twisted self image that resulted from being slighted by a rival 4th grader in the Clallam County Grange Association Produce Display competition in '89? I guess I can't know that answer to the latter until the truth is extolled upon my by random internet trolls who are fueled by invalid extrapolations. As for the former questions, I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Post script to this diatribe: I will add that I think high school soccer is incredible fun to watch (minus injuries and such) and I would highly encourage club players to participate in it. I think it's often more fun for them, given many of them the freedom to try things they might be afraid of or limited from doing on their club team, provides an opportunity to develop coaching/teaching/leadership skills, and prepares them for what soccer will look more like for 99% of them once they complete their youth career. But they have to be a kid who can be patient and adapt to the reality of what their teammates are capable of. Or develop that ability. We've all probably seen that guy on the adult rec league team who is close to stroking out because his team mates are not executing their offense in a manner that could have been used by Cruyff to train the Spanish National team in his day. That guy probably never played for his school team.

[Guest]

Previous two posts are lame. Any merit your arguments (and I do think there are interesting points of discussion buried under a bushel of drivel there) are negated when you have to go ad hominem and start making things up about the original poster. The whole "I disagree with you and I will prove you are wrong by making things up about your kids and saying he or she is a terrible soccer player and you are a bad parent and you don't know anything about soccer" trope is infantile but it gets recycled so often around here. It tends to make me think that the person saying it is just a miserable sap who is projecting about his or her own disappointments. But to the the point being made here - I guess I don't really know that do I? I wonder what drives people to collect their dopamine hits that way.

It's disappointing to me that anytime a person tries to start a meaningful discussion around here there are people who immediately denigrate the topic and the person posting it. People trying to converse with a community about a topic their family is involved in doesn't mean that they are helicopter parents or narcissists - that's an invalid leap of logic to assume so. If you don't enjoy the topic, just move on. Don't be such a "snowflake" and throw a tantrum where you are so dysregulated you have to make things up to support your bitter worldview


My two cents re: the original topic - I think the issue is driven by the diverse amount of experience on high school soccer teams. A typical high school teams gets a mix including the following:

• A handful of kids who have many years experience at higher levels of soccer
• Kids who have plays rec soccer for many years or lots of non-club soccer with family and friends
• Kids who are really good athletes but lack organized soccer experience
• At some schools - a handful of Kids who aren't highly talented athletes and/or lack organized soccer experience but are exploring the sport and team experience and/or helping fill an otherwise empty role.

Schools in expensive zip codes (hello pay to play inequity issues) or ones that have high concentrations of people who immigrated from cultures that place a high value on soccer and are larger schools tend to skew towards having more of the first two bullets. The more those three variables decrease, the higher the concentration of the latter two bullet points on a team.

School soccer is fascinating to me to see how that different mixture of player types is managed. It's hard for a lot of higher level club teams to maintain a disciplined possession based style. It's spectacularly challenging to keep a school based team from going long ball only, even when the coach is pushing that. It's a reflexive tendency for most people to feel like they need to move forward if they have the ball and space. It takes a long time for players to understand they can hold the ball, they can play it backwards, they can make the defenders come to them instead of the opposite. It takes a lot of training and experience for most to overcome the intuition of always being direct in a game.

I see high level players who look to be lost out pitch at times because they are making off ball movement that would be totally appropriate on their club team but puts them totally out of sync with their school team. The best of these players learn to understand this, adjust to the different dynamic, coach and build up their team and often switch to a position that is not their preferred spot to help organize the team (like a forward playing CB or MF to "quarterback" the team (to use another sport's euphemism)).

The kids who get recruited because they are good athletes but lack soccer experience - You can see they are fast and coordinated. But you can also tell their discomfort on the ball and they often have a desire to be incredibly direct. You can also see traits from other sports being applied - basketball kids often intuitively know how where to position themselves when defending both on and off the ball and can have a good sense of off ball movement on offense. But they also go into a wide meg-able stance when defending 1:1 and lack confidence to hold the ball or execute the right pass even if they know what would be ideal. And sometimes they reflexively throw down some heinous picks that would have been fine in basketball but are card-able on the pitch. Toning down the blocking and use of arms is hard for an experienced American football player to minimize in the heat of the moment.

The nuance and skill of making a tackle the right way (even an intentional, illegal one) is an incredibly high level skill that requires an insane amount of experience for most players to execute correctly. Think of all the dynamic internal and external variables you need to process to initiate and execute a good tackle and how quickly you have to do it. It's kind of like hitting a 90+ MPH fastball - you don't really have time to consciously think about it, you just have to react in a reflexive and controlled manner that is born of innumerabaly repetitive prior experiences that honed one's nervous system to a perceptual processing and motor planning ability that would not exist otherwise (full disclosure: I can't and probably never will hit a 90 MPH fastball - but that's what I imagine is going on when I watch MLB players) But many of these players don't know what they don't know and lack the muscle memory experience and judgement to be able to execute such maneuvers in a way you are used to seeing in higher level soccer. The doesn't mean they won't try it, because most of these kids are playing their hearts out trying not to disappoint their team and coach. I am not saying they shouldn't go in for challenging tackles - they'll never develop the skill otherwise - but sometimes there is a bit more mustard on the endeavor than there needs to be.

The challenges described above just get exacerbated the further you move down the bullet point list I made up of player types. You get less experience, less skill, less athleticism but a commensurate level of passion and desire to win and a drive to try their hardest. And probably less emotional composure and regulation in the heat of the battle. Throw in some indignancy from trash talking and a perceived injustice from hard fouls committed against themselves or their team. All these ingredients conspire to make for a way more physical and, frankly, dangerous game.

To the point of the game being more physical in the past at the higher(pro and national) levels in the past. I am no expert on that but that is my impression as well. But those guys were professional level athletes. If they laid someone out or went in studs up, they were doing it intentionally the majority of the time and or were making a decision to risk causing a hard foul. To me, that is very different from the dangerous fouls I often see high school soccer that are often caused by high effort, low composure, low skill, and limited experience and knowledge.

I imagine the refs may have a tendency to swallow their whistle more because they don't want to be be blowing it every 30 seconds when they are shepherding a game full of kids with low experience and the whole thing just snowballs. That creates a league culture that becomes desensitized to more physical play. That carries over, even if it's two teams playing that are private schools and public schools in high rent districts that are stocked with players who do have plenty of experience and skill.

So there's my "Guns, Germs and Steel" level dissertation on why school soccer is more physical. Didn't set out to type that much. What do you think? Does that make sense? Am I missing key issues? Am i an alcoholic tiger mom who is trying to make up for a psychologic scar branded upon my twisted self image that resulted from being slighted by a rival 4th grader in the Clallam County Grange Association Produce Display competition in '89? I guess I can't know that answer to the latter until the truth is extolled upon my by random internet trolls who are fueled by invalid extrapolations. As for the former questions, I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Big Vocab Dad, that you bruh?

[Guest]

Previous two posts are lame. Any merit your arguments (and I do think there are interesting points of discussion buried under a bushel of drivel there) are negated when you have to go ad hominem and start making things up about the original poster. The whole "I disagree with you and I will prove you are wrong by making things up about your kids and saying he or she is a terrible soccer player and you are a bad parent and you don't know anything about soccer" trope is infantile but it gets recycled so often around here. It tends to make me think that the person saying it is just a miserable sap who is projecting about his or her own disappointments. But to the the point being made here - I guess I don't really know that do I? I wonder what drives people to collect their dopamine hits that way.

It's disappointing to me that anytime a person tries to start a meaningful discussion around here there are people who immediately denigrate the topic and the person posting it. People trying to converse with a community about a topic their family is involved in doesn't mean that they are helicopter parents or narcissists - that's an invalid leap of logic to assume so. If you don't enjoy the topic, just move on. Don't be such a "snowflake" and throw a tantrum where you are so dysregulated you have to make things up to support your bitter worldview


My two cents re: the original topic - I think the issue is driven by the diverse amount of experience on high school soccer teams. A typical high school teams gets a mix including the following:

• A handful of kids who have many years experience at higher levels of soccer
• Kids who have plays rec soccer for many years or lots of non-club soccer with family and friends
• Kids who are really good athletes but lack organized soccer experience
• At some schools - a handful of Kids who aren't highly talented athletes and/or lack organized soccer experience but are exploring the sport and team experience and/or helping fill an otherwise empty role.

Schools in expensive zip codes (hello pay to play inequity issues) or ones that have high concentrations of people who immigrated from cultures that place a high value on soccer and are larger schools tend to skew towards having more of the first two bullets. The more those three variables decrease, the higher the concentration of the latter two bullet points on a team.

School soccer is fascinating to me to see how that different mixture of player types is managed. It's hard for a lot of higher level club teams to maintain a disciplined possession based style. It's spectacularly challenging to keep a school based team from going long ball only, even when the coach is pushing that. It's a reflexive tendency for most people to feel like they need to move forward if they have the ball and space. It takes a long time for players to understand they can hold the ball, they can play it backwards, they can make the defenders come to them instead of the opposite. It takes a lot of training and experience for most to overcome the intuition of always being direct in a game.

I see high level players who look to be lost out pitch at times because they are making off ball movement that would be totally appropriate on their club team but puts them totally out of sync with their school team. The best of these players learn to understand this, adjust to the different dynamic, coach and build up their team and often switch to a position that is not their preferred spot to help organize the team (like a forward playing CB or MF to "quarterback" the team (to use another sport's euphemism)).

The kids who get recruited because they are good athletes but lack soccer experience - You can see they are fast and coordinated. But you can also tell their discomfort on the ball and they often have a desire to be incredibly direct. You can also see traits from other sports being applied - basketball kids often intuitively know how where to position themselves when defending both on and off the ball and can have a good sense of off ball movement on offense. But they also go into a wide meg-able stance when defending 1:1 and lack confidence to hold the ball or execute the right pass even if they know what would be ideal. And sometimes they reflexively throw down some heinous picks that would have been fine in basketball but are card-able on the pitch. Toning down the blocking and use of arms is hard for an experienced American football player to minimize in the heat of the moment.

The nuance and skill of making a tackle the right way (even an intentional, illegal one) is an incredibly high level skill that requires an insane amount of experience for most players to execute correctly. Think of all the dynamic internal and external variables you need to process to initiate and execute a good tackle and how quickly you have to do it. It's kind of like hitting a 90+ MPH fastball - you don't really have time to consciously think about it, you just have to react in a reflexive and controlled manner that is born of innumerabaly repetitive prior experiences that honed one's nervous system to a perceptual processing and motor planning ability that would not exist otherwise (full disclosure: I can't and probably never will hit a 90 MPH fastball - but that's what I imagine is going on when I watch MLB players) But many of these players don't know what they don't know and lack the muscle memory experience and judgement to be able to execute such maneuvers in a way you are used to seeing in higher level soccer. The doesn't mean they won't try it, because most of these kids are playing their hearts out trying not to disappoint their team and coach. I am not saying they shouldn't go in for challenging tackles - they'll never develop the skill otherwise - but sometimes there is a bit more mustard on the endeavor than there needs to be.

The challenges described above just get exacerbated the further you move down the bullet point list I made up of player types. You get less experience, less skill, less athleticism but a commensurate level of passion and desire to win and a drive to try their hardest. And probably less emotional composure and regulation in the heat of the battle. Throw in some indignancy from trash talking and a perceived injustice from hard fouls committed against themselves or their team. All these ingredients conspire to make for a way more physical and, frankly, dangerous game.

To the point of the game being more physical in the past at the higher(pro and national) levels in the past. I am no expert on that but that is my impression as well. But those guys were professional level athletes. If they laid someone out or went in studs up, they were doing it intentionally the majority of the time and or were making a decision to risk causing a hard foul. To me, that is very different from the dangerous fouls I often see high school soccer that are often caused by high effort, low composure, low skill, and limited experience and knowledge.

I imagine the refs may have a tendency to swallow their whistle more because they don't want to be be blowing it every 30 seconds when they are shepherding a game full of kids with low experience and the whole thing just snowballs. That creates a league culture that becomes desensitized to more physical play. That carries over, even if it's two teams playing that are private schools and public schools in high rent districts that are stocked with players who do have plenty of experience and skill.

So there's my "Guns, Germs and Steel" level dissertation on why school soccer is more physical. Didn't set out to type that much. What do you think? Does that make sense? Am I missing key issues? Am i an alcoholic tiger mom who is trying to make up for a psychologic scar branded upon my twisted self image that resulted from being slighted by a rival 4th grader in the Clallam County Grange Association Produce Display competition in '89? I guess I can't know that answer to the latter until the truth is extolled upon my by random internet trolls who are fueled by invalid extrapolations. As for the former questions, I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Shut up dumb dumb

[Guest]

Spoken like an expert in lame parenting.

shut up woke karen

[Guest]

Thats a little harsh, so I will tone it down a bit.

HS Soccer isnt for everybody. Your concerns are legitimate. Maybe just have your child play futsal, ttain with other like minded individuals, or enjoy another sport.

Your pansy as5 child probably wouldnt make the team anyway, as you suggest.

A couple suggestions:
- The world doesnt revolve around your preferences.
- Stop being a helicopter parent and trying to get the world to accomodate to your child.

You aint teaching your kid the right way

to the original poster, ignore this negative creep who posted #4 and #5. if I had a dollar for every time he calls an op "stupid", would be a millionaire. funny thing is, without ops, he'd have f*ck all to do all day.

and what does " copa america in the 80's" have to do with high school soccer today, you stupid old man? absolutely nothing. and the op never said he/she was worried about their player getting injured so why all the name calling and mockery? the concern about injury came from a different post (#3).

what the op did say since you apparently cannot process text is that they are questioning why the quality of hs soccer is so bad and whether there is any recourse to change that. you have an answer to that jerk? because i don't. at least nothing that is practical.

curious how this plays out in england? is the quality any better?

[Guest]

Shut up dumb dumb

yeah because you don't have sh*t to offer, loser.